Brazile: Being DNC Chair worse than Katrina

[BainsBane]

“In terms of the emotional toll,” on George Stephenopolis.

She got death threats from Trumpeters. The hack and “High Command in Brooklyn.”

“I found no evidence of rigging.”

Sounds like most of what she says is from frustration. She’s quite scattered in her discussion of the pressures.

[NurseJackie]

1. She's not right. Her pilot light is out. She's got splinters in the windmills of her mind.

Last edited Sun Nov 5, 2017, 02:31 PM - Edit history (1)

[BainsBane]

2. Now shes blaming Obama.

[DURHAM D]

3. She keeps losing her plot line. nt

[cwydro]

17. Dang, something is sure up with her.

Or, as I saw someone suggest - she’s aiming for a job at Fox. Sheesh.

[emulatorloo]

4. Nice way to trivialize real suffering experienced by Katrina victims

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. No, she's actually from New Orleans. Her whole family were victiims

She has a real basis for her comments. I was in correspondence with her at that time. I can't remember all the details anymore, but I believe she almost lost a parent to flooding and she wasn't sure if she had for a day or two before the rescue was verified - if my memory serves me. Her entire extended family was displaced by the floods. Brazzile spent a lot of time personally working on Hurricane relief efforts. She was pretty overwhelmed personally by what happened to New Orleans - so she is not just speaking idly making an emotional comparison to the stress she underwent from both events. I just found this with an internet search:


"As the third eldest of her siblings, she didn’t just exhibit the standard leadership behaviors of most in her birth order — next to her mother (Donna feels she eventually passed away of exhaustion in 1988), she was and is the glue of her family. Her voice amplified as she seamlessly tapped into the desperation from six years ago: “When Katrina hit, my family lost everything — their homes, jobs, friends, and then it was a ripple effect, as so many others attached to them were affected. I had to come up with $12,000 per month to take care of everyone. I was asking anyone who came in here what their clothing size was to see if they’d donate; I even asked Wolf Blitzer (pronounced in her potent New Orleans drawl, “Blit-zah”) for his shoe size when I was at CNN."

[moriah]

16. That's actually why I'm not flipping over the "whipping girl" alleged comment.

As DNC Chair, she was the face of the DNC. Metaphorically, she might have felt like she was getting heat for things that weren't her fault, when the people she felt were actually responsible were insulated from criticism.

(I'm admitting now I haven't had the stomach yet for 12 Years A Slave, but I'm assuming the use of a "whipping boy/girl" was perhaps similar to the use in medieval royalty for a minor monarch to have their best friend be the person who received the punishments *they*deserved.)

But had a white male DNC chair used that expression and specifically referred to that movie vs royalty, I'd be EXTREMELY judgy.

[emulatorloo]

18. Then she should know better.

It's not the only inappropriate analogy/simile she makes in the book.

[moriah]

27. Perhaps. Not being a member of either group...

.... aka, none of my ancestors were slaves, and I didn't experience Katrina....

I'll let people who actually do understand those positions be the judge of whether those comparisons were reasonable.

I'm still wondering about the veracity of the "whipping girl" comment since it's been denied by Cheng's people (essentially that if such a conversation occurred he wasn't on it). But again, I've never seen the movie. And if I had, I likely wouldn't identify the same way with a character to even think of the metaphor as someone who might be visualizing one of their forebears as that character would.

[BannonsLiver]

19. Must have been before she went off the rails.

Donna should be in a padded room.

[cwydro]

26. No one forced her to become DNC chair.

It’s a ridiculous analogy.

[delisen]

21. She was assertive in going to Press Bush to get help

for New Orleans and I believe was successful because she cut through a lot of the anger at bush at the time. Reportedly she asked him what it would take to work together to bring back New Orleans, and he said 'civility."
She wasted no time on blame and I assume she was a positive force.

The above is one reason the way this book is written is puzzling to me.

[grantcart]

5. Oh fucking boo hoo hoo. If the heat is too hot get out of the kitchen

This change in DB is so significant I have to wonder if she isn't going through some physical or emotional crises.

[emulatorloo]

6. "Frustration"

Donna Brazile: I considered replacing Clinton with Biden as 2016 Democratic nominee

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brazile-i-considered-replacing-clinton-with-biden-as-2016-democratic-nominee/2017/11/04/f0b75418-bf4c-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html

Brazile opens her book by describing the painful days following Clinton’s defeat. She received calls of gratitude from party leaders but still felt slighted.

“I never heard from Hillary,” she writes. “I knew what I wanted to say to her and it was: I have nothing but respect for you being so brave and classy considering everything that went on. But in the weeks after the loss, every time I checked my phone thinking I might have missed her call, it wasn’t her.”

Finally, in February 2017, Clinton rang.

“This was chitchat, like I was talking to someone I didn’t know,” Brazile writes. “I know Hillary. I know she was being as sincere as possible, but I wanted something more from her.”

---------

Brazile "felt slighted"? After attempting to replace Clinton/Kaine w Biden/Booker because HRC had walking pneumonia? Ok, sure..

[delisen]

22. Clinton by her own account was so devastated that

she tried to avoid going to the inauguration at the end of January.

One thing for certain, lots of active Democrats went through hell from November through January.

Hope something positive comes about after all that personal misery.

[emulatorloo]

25. Agreed.

[lunamagica]

31. This reminds me of Cornel West. He didn't get the seat he wanted at President Obama's inaguration

and never forgave him for it. Huge, huge egos.

[Kirk Lover]

7. She sounded hysterical and it was very unbecoming.

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

8. Wtf.

[WhiteTara]

9. Sounds like the job was way too big

for her. In over her head, she didn't have grace to accept her part in the debacle of the election. I'm sure I'll see her on Fox in the future.

[GeorgeGist]

10. More evidence ...

that the Russians are winning?

[Tatiana]

11. Worse than Katrina????

Who says something like that? Being the chair of a political party (admittedly in turmoil) was worse than Katrina? A life-changing event where nearly 2,000 people died?

Very poor analogy.

[Tom Rinaldo]

15. My goal now isn't to defend Brazzile, simply to put that comment in it's real context

Yes she should have known how it would be taken - but she was comparing two traumatic and stressful episodes from her personal life. Brazzile is a New Orleans native. Her entire extended family lost their homes in Katrina. A parent nearly perished. She was spending all of her time working on New Orleans relief efforts and supporting her relatives physically, financially and emotionally through the crisis.

I believe her reference isn't about magnitudes of crisis in broad human terms the City vs the Paty, simply the stress she personally underwent in both instances. It's an insider comment. People in the media who knew her knew how effected she was by Katrina at the time.

[StevieM]

20. I am pissed at Donna but I agree with the point you are making here about her Katrina comment. (eom)

[ismnotwasm]

28. I think she must have written the book herself

With no help or incompetent help. The prose is awful, and her analogies are not politic to say the least. She also was not clear on what she “meant” or more than one topic thus far, with dodgy “facts”. Which is why she’s busy clarifying. The book will sell, but not be taken seriously as this role out is a disaster

I don’t know what’s going on with her. She has always appeared to be more competent than this, and she’s certainly no political neophyte.

[BainsBane]

29. It was about the emotional toll on herself

Still, a poor analogy.

[Tatiana]

32. This makes sense and thank you for adding this clarification.

It’s a poor choice of words but I do understand how she could be referencing two extreme points of stress in her life. It sounds to me like she felt hamstrung to make decisions as Chair because of existing agreements with the Clinton campaign.

I’ve no doubt that there are things that could have been done better. I just question the timing of all this. Was there more going on than we’re being told?

[Madam45for2923]

12. Feel bad 4 her. Being threatened is not fun. Being hacked by foreign adversaries is not fun.

I go back N forth about Donna Brazile.

She is not as resilient as HRC.

[emulatorloo]

23. Being exposed as writing "rigged" falsehoods isn't fun either.

Whether intentional or not.

I feel sorry for her too. She tried to reinvent herself in the book to be more marketable to future campaigns like Bernie 2020 or similar. Hard to get work if you backed a losing GE candidate.

[Orrex]

14. Maybe she means the Katrina and the Waves song?

[LisaM]

24. She doesn't seem like the right fit for the job.

She was overmatched in 2000 during the recount when she let Tom Delay and Joe Lieberman take over the narrative - when Delay sent his staffers out for the Brooks Brothers riot and Lieberman caved on late absentee votes from the military. She must have some qualifications that aren't immediately evident to the lay person, but she is a woeful spokesperson. Even DWS, when she was actually allowed to speak in the summer of 2016, had some decent sound bites.

[Mike Nelson]

30. Sounds like somethng...

...Trump would say, or tweet... honestly, I get what she's saying, but she's not thinking.